Kepler for the Masses: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti from Zotac Review

Graphics cards based on Nvidia’s top GK104 “Kepler” graphics processor become more and more affordable. We have just recently talked about GeForce GTX 670, but time has already come to meet a new kid on the block – GeForce GTX 660 Ti!

It's been less than three months since the GeForce GTX 670 release but Nvidia has already prepared another new product. It is the highly anticipated GeForce GTX 660 Ti. Huge hopes are laid on this product because it is targeted at the popular mainstream market segment where AMD's Radeon HD 78xx series (and the cheapening Radeon HD 7950) have entrenched themselves. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti faces a daunting task indeed as there are a lot of high-speed Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition cards selling at highly attractive prices. Well, Nvidia's partners are no sluggards, either. We are going to carry out our first test session not with a reference GeForce GTX 660 Ti, as is usually the case, but with a serial product from Zotac.

The rest of Nvidia’s partners, including ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, Galaxy, MSI and others, have also come up with their own versions of GeForce GTX 660 Ti. Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to test them as well, but now please welcome the Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2GB!

Closer Look at Zotac GeForce GTX 660 Ti 2 GB Graphics Card

Technical Specifications and Market Positioning

The table below compares side by side the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 against the reference Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti. We are going to dwell on the distinguishing features of the specific Zotac product reviewed today late in this article:

The GPU of the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is in fact a copy of the GTX 670’s GPU with one disabled rasterization cluster, so the total number of raster operators is 24 instead of 32. The memory bus is reduced in width from 256 to 192 bits, so the peak memory bandwidth is 144.2 rather than 192.3 GB/s. The number of texture-mapping units and unified shader processors has remained intact. The cut-down bus and rasterization section help lower the power requirements. The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is specified to consume 150 watts at peak load and is recommended to be used with a 450-watt power supply. There are no other differences from the GeForce GTX 670 in terms of specifications.

The positioning of the new graphics card is somewhat tricky. The flagship GeForce GTX 680 comes at a recommended price of $499 today. The GeForce GTX 670 is priced at $399, so the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is expectedly priced at $299. We have a logical and linear reduction in price in $100 steps moving from a higher to a lower model. However, it is hard to name the competitor to this card in the AMD camp. After the recent price cut the Radeon HD 7950 is expected to cost $349 and the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, $299. However, AMD has got some advantage in time, having released its current product series much earlier than Nvidia, so the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition can already be bought for $269 and the Radeon HD 7950, for its recommended $349. Considering that a new graphics card usually costs more than recommended in its first few months on the market, we can suppose that the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is going to compete with the Radeon HD 7950 for the time being.